Chapter 28 Team Wolf
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Team Wolf
GABE
The Bobcats Arena was packed to the brim. Fans filled every seat, most of them wearing Bobcat jerseys and caps. It was a beautiful sea of black and blue and white. Music blasted as the announcers called for the puck drop.
Aside from the increased security, there was something else I noticed that was different about tonight.
There was a large scattering of rainbows throughout the crowd, whether they wore old Pride merch from last year or had rainbow hats or waved tiny rainbow flags. There were even more of them on the ice. The entire team had used Pride tape on their sticks this evening.
A bright and bold signal of solidarity. It made my heart happy.
I hoped this kind of display would speak louder than the trolls who wanted to keep diversity out of sports, simply because they were too scared to confront their own frail masculinities.
And there were plenty of hateful trolls out there, many of them deciding to take it upon themselves to send hateful and vile emails directly to the team or my management.
It was disgusting behavior, but tonight wasn’t about them.
I looked over my shoulder. Eli was behind me, his hazel eyes catching mine under his helmet. He grinned around his mouth guard. I winked at him.
Our first game as mates. One of our last games against the Sharks.
It was time for us to shine.
Let’s fucking do this.
Emmy was lined up and facing the Shark’s center—which would have been Viktor, but that fucker wasn’t even here. Two of his pack mates were still on the roster tonight, but it appeared like the alpha of the Savannah pack had more important things to do tonight.
No matter. I planned on sending such a decisive victory his way tonight that even he’d feel a stab of shame wherever the hell he was.
The whistle screeched, the puck dropped, and the battle ensued.
Emmy exploded into action. He slapped his stick down, protecting the puck and sending it flying to his right.
Directly toward me.
I took control of the puck, gliding on the ice, seeing a blur of red and gold racing toward me.
I slowed down by a hair. Eli read my mind, seeing the danger, his blades slicing across the ice as he blocked the opposing Shark from getting to me.
The fucker chirped some stupid shit my way, trying to incite me, get in my head so that I dropped possession of the puck.
Not going to fucking happen.
Emmy had skated forward, into the Sharks’ defensive zone. He was an aggressive player and loved taking shots early, applying pressure. He did just that. It was blocked by the goalie. Possession was picked up by a Shark.
I glanced at Eli. He was behind me. I could sense his presence as if he had an invisible hand pressed to my back.
“Distracted by your boyfriend?” one of the Sharks chirped at me.
He said “boyfriend” in the way a taunting middle schooler would.
I smacked him with my stick on the back of his leg.
Another tussle sparked up on the other side of the rink.
One of our left wingers, Franklin Mace, was trying to wrestle the puck away from the Sharks.
That’s when I saw one of their defensemen going for Eli. I accelerated forward and hit the guy with my shoulder, sending him slamming into the boards.
The fight for the puck grew more and more intense. More insults and curses were being shouted. The plays were getting dirty, from both sides, although the Sharks seemed to be taking even more liberties with the rule book than usual.
And the ref wasn’t saying shit.
It was toward the end of the first period when the scoreboard finally broke from even, except it went in the wrong direction.
Soren was on goal. He fell to the left to try and block the shot, but the puck inched by him.
The net shook.
The air horns blasted.
The Sharks got their goal.
“Fuck!” I shouted at the same time Coach called a line change.
I listened to Coach and skated to the bench as Dylan swapped with me.
I grabbed a Powerade bottle from the bin and sat down on the bench, spraying it onto my face to cool off.
The icy cold water helped reset my system.
I took a gulp of it. None of those bottles had actual Powerade in them for some reason.
I watched the game from the bench. I clapped my stick against the wall when Emmy was close to making a goal but was blocked. I kept an eye on Elijah, who skated around the ice like a predator. He was so fucking handsome, even with all the gear on.
Maybe it was because I knew exactly how he looked when all that gear was off.
I licked my lips. Took another drink of water. Even though I wasn’t in the game right now, that could change in seconds, and I had to keep my head in it, not focused on how badly I wanted to drop Elijah to the ground, rip off his gear, and claim him right fucking here.
Fuck.
My cock throbbed against my thigh.
Eli took a shoulder ram to the back that almost knocked him down, but he kept pushing.
“What the fuck?” I shouted at the referee. “That was clearly a fucking penalty!”
He didn’t even look in my direction. That would have given us a power play. Instead, the whistle was called on us only moments after.
“Are you fucking kidding,” I said.
Coach shouted for Eli to change. He skated over and moved into the penalty box.
Eli sat next to me, spitting out his mouth guard. “You’re doing great out there,” I said, handing him my bottle. He tipped his head back and squeezed, gulping down the water and wiping his wet lips with the back of his sleeve.
“Thank you. And you are too.”
“We make a great team, huh?”
“We do.” He bumped me with his shoulder. “And later, maybe we—”
The air horn blasted again. We both whipped our attention to the ice.
Emmy had sunk a goal! He skated in a small circle with his stick raised.
“Fuck yessss,” Eli said.
“Nice, nice.”
But I knew the game wasn’t over yet.
The battle on the ice pushed into the third period. Scoreboard still had one to one. Exhaustion was beginning to creep into my human teammates at this point. Frustration also climbed. Coach Julian’s calls and line changes were yelled out with an increasing edge of desperation.
The Sharks had been playing dirty all night, landing blows that would have been called as penalties by any other referee who hadn’t been paid off.
Chris had taken a stick to the face that rocked him even under his helmet, the edge of it hitting him in the cheek and leaving him bloody.
It didn’t stop him from playing. A medic placed a large Band-Aid over it (not that it mattered since his shifter genes would have healed it in minutes), and he was back on the ice, taking center.
There were only fifty seconds left on the clock. We could drag this into overtime, but every minute that passed pushed us closer toward making some stupid mistake that would cost us the game. Coach shouted. Another line change. Eli leaped over the wall and onto the ice, gliding behind me.
The puck was in the Sharks’ possession. They drove it forward.
Snap! A stick slammed against mine. I spun in a tight, controlled circle, weaving backward. That was when Chris, bloody face and all, pushed forward with an explosive energy and snatched the puck.
The roar of the crowd was its own physical force, pushing down on us like gravity. We flipped around. Eli stayed behind me, but I kept him in my periphery.
I noticed he sped up. He was pinching, joining the offensive. I slowed down a bit so that we were side by side, needing to protect him as badly as I needed to protect the puck.
Protect. Protect. Mine.
All mine.
He was lined up with the goal. Chris saw it too. This was it. Chris slapped the puck back. It went sliding across the ice with the speed of a comet. The Sharks gave chase, but the pass was perfectly executed, giving Eli all the power.
He lined himself up with the goal.
Ten seconds.
He couldn’t second-guess. I raced up the side, trying to block one of the Sharks from getting to him. The Shark shouted something about my mother as I shouldered him into the boards. He lost balance and fell to his knees. I skated up, toward Eli.
Seven seconds.
Eli reared his stick back and swung it forward, hitting the puck with a loud crack. It flew with the same speed as before, directly at the net, at the gap between the goalie’s leg pads. Such a tight shot to make. A desperate one to take, a smart one to take.
The only one to take.
The goalie blocked it.
Five seconds.
The rebound sent the puck in my direction.
It was as if time slowed to a crawl. I functioned purely on instinct, honed by years and years of training and playing a game I truly loved.
My muscles acted of their own accord as I burst forward.
I met the puck with the edge of my stick, took control of it.
The gap between the goalie and the net seemed to have been highlighted by a bright white light.
Or maybe that was just glare off the ice.
Whatever it was, I shot directly at it, putting all my strength behind the hit. Time zoomed forward, back to a normal pace. The Sharks’ defenseman that I had hit was back on his feet and coming for revenge, slamming into me.
He was a half second too late. The puck shot right past the goalie and into the net.
The air horn blared as the score updated, and the game ended.
Cheers erupted through the arena. The rest of the Bobcats who had been on the bench jumped over the boards and onto the rink. Hoots and chants and congratulations and fuck yeahs all echoed around me. I felt a rush of pure adrenaline mixed with unmitigated joy.
We won. We fucking won. The Bobcats won.
Eli and I had won.
Our first game as boyfriends together, and we played like a single mind. Together, we proved we were a force to be reckoned with.
And the Sharks would have to go home knowing they wouldn’t be playing for the championship series. They blew their chance, and I’d been the one to seal the deal.
“Fuck yeah!” I shouted as I took off my helmet and looked around, spotting the man I’d been keeping an eye on for the entire night.
I skated to Eli. He had his helmet off. His wavy curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat.
His cheeks were flushed, and his smile spread from ear to ear.
Out of everyone in this building—all thousands of them—his scent was the strongest. And even after playing an entire hockey game, he still smelled amazing.
Notes of pine and woodsy spice with hints of soft vanilla.
He didn’t just smell great, either.
He looked like more of a prize than anything we could have won tonight.
He was my Stanley Cup. He was my Olympic gold medal.
Elijah Sager was my everything.
I wanted him to know that.
And that’s when I said something I’d been meaning to say for a while now.
“I love you, I fucking love you,” I said, holding Eli’s face in my hands and kissing him, not even giving him a chance to respond.
He did, though. His wide, shocked puppy-dog eyes blinked through his surprise before he said it back.
“I love you, Gabe.” He kissed me again, the roar of the crowd surrounding us like it formed its own protective bubble.
Everything melted away. I knew I loved him the moment I allowed him into my shift room.
Maybe sooner—maybe if I really looked at the threads fate had used to weave our connection, I would have seen that I had fallen in love with him from the moment I first laid eyes on him.
I’d been nervous to say it out loud, though. Even if I felt it as deeply as I felt the pull of the moon on my soul, I couldn’t bring myself to say it any sooner.
I’d been scared of hearing he didn’t feel the same. That this was moving too fast. That my declaration frightened him even more than seeing me in my were form.
But none of that happened. All he did was reaffirm my feelings with his own.
Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was an observant DJ who wanted to make a statement, but I looked up to see that our kiss had been on the jumbotron just as “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga started playing through the arena.
“A little on the nose, huh?” I said as I kissed him again.